Bears, lynx and wolves roam wild in Estonia, a country about half the size of Ireland and with a population of less than 2 million. It isn't exactly the heart of the euro zone, and yet on a bright summer's day in 2013, it is playing the central role in a production by Wolfgang Schäuble. Germany's finance minister is trying to demonstrate that Europe is about more than just crisis, frustration and strife -- that joy and harmony are also part of the European equation.

To illustrate his point, he has invited two dozen musicians and singers from the Baltic country to perform at his ministry in Berlin. Their mission is to add spice to the drab everyday lives of politicians tasked with saving the euro, and they are achieving the desired outcome, at least when it comes to their host. Schäuble, swaying blissfully to the melancholy tunes performed by a girls' choir, talks about his love of Bach and Mendelssohn and cheerfully admits that he was "a feared violinist" in his youth. "Europe is about more than money and the economy," he tells his audience, "so stop complaining."

Schäuble Reborn

Germans are seeing a new side of Schäuble's personality these days. When he turned 70 a year ago, the papers described him as a "public servant," a "man of duty" and "Sisyphus," a political man of sorrows who never managed to become chancellor and who sacrificed his health for the public good.

Today, the minister is trying to dispel his established image as a tragic icon in a wheelchair through prolonged attacks of good cheer. He has been going to concerts, parties and receptions, talking to the weekly magazine Stern about relationships ("I don't kiss men"), and he has recently taken to starting his speeches with little jokes about his disability. "You'll have to stand," he tells his audience at a reception in Berlin's elegant Hotel Adlon. After a dramatic pause, he adds: "But I can remain seated."

Schäuble has been a member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, for more than 40 years. He negotiated the German unification treaty and pushed the euro through the parliament. He could, with a clear conscience, retire to his handicapped-accessible multigenerational house in the southwestern city of Offenburg and become the conservative version of Helmut Schmidt, the former Social Democratic chancellor turned elder statesman.

But Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wants to remain in his job. He wants to be finance minister again, assuming the outcome of the September national election goes his party's way. It isn't just because he would then have held top positions in the Bundestag and the government for longer than Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a Free Democratic Party (FDP) politician and former foreign minister, but also because he is deeply convinced that his contributions are critical to rescuing the Continent.

"Someone has to keep the store going," he says, and it's clear that by "the store," he doesn't just mean his budget or his party, but also the entire euro zone. And that someone, in his view, is Schäuble.

That's why Schäuble runs his ministry as if it were Germany's "European Ministry" with an attached budget division, and why he wants to help the quarrelling club of nations based in Brussels finally become a political union, a step that was skipped when the currency union was introduced.

But one question remains: Is Schäuble truly convinced that he and Chancellor Merkel are building the same Europe? And how can he be certain that he will be able to withstand the rigors of his job, especially after his experiences in the last legislative period?

The Right-Hand Man

Hans-Peter Repnik flashes his brightest smile as he opens the door of his little house on Lake Constance. The box trees in the front yard are neatly pruned, his wife has just made a fresh pot of coffee, and there are ham sandwiches on the dining room table.

Repnik was Schäuble's most important confidant for decades. He was the propaganda chief and the one to whip together majorities when his mentor headed the parliamentary group of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Repnik advised him in the dark hours of the CDU's political donations scandal in the 1990s, when Schäuble's involvement in illegal party financing led to the loss of his political influence and Angela Merkel's rise to prominence within the CDU. And Repnik was there when Schäuble, after being injured in an assassination attempt in October 1990, appeared in a wheelchair for the first time, took a spin around the table and said: "Look, Hans-Peter, it works."

Two years ago, Repnik was sitting beside Schäuble's hospital bed once again. The minister had been in a Berlin hospital for weeks after a surgical wound failed to heal properly, and he was contemplating stepping down. But then, says Repnik, Chancellor Merkel called and said: "Mr. Schäuble, I can't do without you."

Repnik and Schäuble talked for hours, about Europe, politics and life. Schäuble looked terrible. He had lost 10 kilograms (22 lbs.), and yet he was already bubbling with ideas again. When Repnik left the hospital late in the evening, he knew that the chancellor had made a deep impression on his friend. "It's good for Schäuble to feel needed," Repnik says.

Frenemies

Merkel and Schäuble probably have the most distant and most complicated relationship of any two politicians in Berlin. They meet for long talks every few months, at the chancellery or at Merkel's favorite Greek restaurant in the western part of Berlin. And yet they still address each other with unusual formality.

Both treat politics like a game of chess, full of surprise openings, tactical moves and rapid castlings. But now even insiders are never quite sure whether they are playing with or against each other at a given moment. The two politicians have a long history of mutual attacks as well as a deep respect for each other. "The most serious mistake you can make," the minister likes to tell his department heads, "is to underestimate Ms. Merkel."

At its core, their relationship is based on a mundane, businesslike arrangement. It guarantees him the most important ministerial post in the administration, and it lends a statesmanlike luster to her team of minions, such as Chancellery chief of staff Ronald Pofalla, CDU General Secretary Hermann Gröhe and Peter Hintze, a parliamentary state secretary in the economics ministry. Merkel protects Schäuble whenever the parliamentary group complains about his endless, mumbled lectures on the euro, and he defends her efforts to modernize social policy.

When a rebellion was brewing among party conservatives during the CDU dispute over gay marriage, it was Schäuble who brought his long-time underlings into line. "In the past, people who wanted to live differently from others were discriminated against. We don't want that anymore," he said before penning a long essay on the pros and cons of the "principle of values-based policy" in the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Cementing His Status in the Cabinet

Schäuble fills the intellectual vacuum that characterizes Merkel's CDU. But, in this way, he is also cementing his position as chief minister in the federal cabinet. He has always been convinced that he is vastly superior to his fellow cabinet ministers.

Unlike in the past, however, he no longer expresses his views with sharp arrogance, but with almost grandfatherly indulgence, especially toward female cabinet ministers. Schäuble sat next to Family Affairs Minister Kristina Schröder as she sugarcoated the results of a joint government study on family policy. And when Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen alienated the majority of the CDU-CSU parliamentary group in the dispute over female quotas, Schäuble warned her not to overstep the mark. He also urged her not to hit upon the idea of speaking in the Bundestag.

When needed, though, Schäuble can still be harsh and scathing. Only now, he is equally adept at playing the cabinet's amiable grandfather-like figure.

He and the labor minister recently took part in a panel discussion on the euro crisis, with a number of French students in the audience. Von der Leyen was practically glowing with ambition, determined to make a good impression, and gave one of her famous we-can-do-it-if-we-just-want-it-enough speeches. Schäuble, in contrast, dryly spelled out the key words of Germany's bailout policy, from "competitiveness" to "structural reforms." It was an appearance by a "seasoned crisis diplomat versus an agitated marketing chief," and yet the role-playing game conveyed a second, no less important message: Von der Leyen still has a shot at becoming chancellor one day, but it's too late for Schäuble.

It is part of the cold logic of power that politicians' importance doesn't just depend on what they are, but also on what they have the potential to become. Von der Leyen is not at the end of her career, whereas Schäuble, if only because of his age, is no longer a viable successor to Merkel. But this is also precisely what makes him so valuable to the chancellor.

At the same time, it also weakens his position in European policy, his pet subject. Schäuble believes that the currency crisis presents an opportunity for Europe's political union. He envisions this looking like the Atomium, the massive molecule-shaped structure in Brussels: A core group of countries consisting of Germany, France and other countries join together to form a new commonwealth with its own parliament and a democratically elected government, while the remaining nations form a group orbiting the core, each positioned at varying distances from it. This is what Schäuble had already envisioned in the 1990s, and he still wants it today.

As appealing as Schäuble's dream may be, the chances of it becoming reality seem slim.

The enormous amount of German taxpayers money, which has been given away since the end of WW2, in the vain hope of buying the friendship of other nations, could more than pay off all the debts Germany has. Why a Whole series of [...]

The enormous amount of German taxpayers money, which has been given away since the end of WW2, in the vain hope of buying the friendship of other nations, could more than pay off all the debts Germany has. Why a Whole series of governments have chosen to waste the wealth of its own electorate, has long been a puzzle to many outside observers.
Mr. Schäuble might ask himself: How many roads must a man walk down, before he admits he is lost!

Jim in MD 07/17/2013

2. Poor Michel!

Germans mostly have given their money to...Germans in the east. They have vocally opted out of NATO until recent years, except to sell tanks around the world. Schauble has played the poor, dutiful Michel but the reality is [...]

Germans mostly have given their money to...Germans in the east. They have vocally opted out of NATO until recent years, except to sell tanks around the world. Schauble has played the poor, dutiful Michel but the reality is different. He is the architect of austerity around the world and German withdrawal from all but that great ally, Russia. Of course, it all was to save German banks, not Europe.

newsfreak 07/17/2013

3. The Fight to save Europe,

has turned into a search for Helpers amongst Collegestudents. Having said such this kind of Weight is obvious too much for a regular Student to bear. College is, studying, girls, dudes, beer, camp outs and enjoying the upper [...]

has turned into a search for Helpers amongst Collegestudents. Having said such this kind of Weight is obvious too much for a regular Student to bear. College is, studying, girls, dudes, beer, camp outs and enjoying the upper Youth. Europe was never constructed to become the No. 1 Moneyshaker and Economic Powerhouse in the World, there simply would be no Competition! Germany alone competes, "competes" with China as an Export Worldchampion! Since the turn of the Century and with that the Rise of the Currency Euro the World has been at absolute Turmoil! There are some Europeans i would like to say go all the Way just to see how far the "system" could be brought to a Maximum Effectiveness, Countries had to fall for that! Citizens are having massive Problems in everyday Life all over Europe. Now they look to the Balkan States, it seems it isnt even a matter of time anymore.

peterbolt508 07/17/2013

4. optional

A well known English politician (Enoch Powell ) once said " All political careers end in failure ". It is possible that Schauble `s will also end the same way.
In any event I doubt it will be the Europe he would wish

A well known English politician (Enoch Powell ) once said " All political careers end in failure ". It is possible that Schauble `s will also end the same way.
In any event I doubt it will be the Europe he would wish

awareadams 07/18/2013

5. Terrible article

this article should never have been printed in Der Speigel. IF Schauble and Merkel have differences, an article would be helpful if it succinctly stated those differences, and then commented on the differences.
Instead this [...]

this article should never have been printed in Der Speigel. IF Schauble and Merkel have differences, an article would be helpful if it succinctly stated those differences, and then commented on the differences.
Instead this article goes off on personalities---its as if writers wants to be "dramatic" and deal with personalities. This article is an example of junk journalism.